[Ela of Salisbury 03] - The Lost Child Read online

  The Lost Child

  An Ela of Salisbury Medieval Mystery

  J. G. Lewis

  For my son, Jordan Lewis, artist and storyteller extraordinaire.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Author’s Note

  Copyright 2020 by J.G. Lewis

  Acknowledgments

  Once again I am deeply in debt to Betsy van der Hoek, Anne MacFarlane and Judith Tilden for their careful readings and excellent suggestions. Many thanks also to my wonderful editor, Lynn Messina. All remaining errors are mine.

  Chapter 1

  September 1226

  The familiar tap of chisels on stone rang in the air as Ela Longespée rode into New Salisbury. She glanced up at the massive new cathedral that had emerged from sheep-grazed meadows to dominate the landscape in just a few years. It shone in the morning sun, a testament to God’s glory and the grace he’d bestowed on Salisbury and its people.

  She’d come here ostensibly to buy a new basket for gathering herbs, but her real intent was to call on her former lady’s maid, Sibel, who had recently married the local basket seller. Their shop lay in a side street near the cathedral close, which made for easy visiting. Ela had barely turned onto the street when Sibel spotted her and hurried over, face bright with pleasure.

  “Good day to you, Mistress Warren.” Ela enjoyed greeting Sibel with her new name.

  “And to you, my lady.” Sibel bowed her head. “May God be with you.”

  Ela climbed down from her horse, Freya, and passed the reins to her attendant. “Marriage agrees with you.”

  “It’s only been a few weeks,” protested Sibel with a slight flush of her cheeks. “But my good husband is kind and I’m most content.”

  “I’m so glad—” A shout from a nearby street drew Ela’s attention. She’d heard raised voices mingled with the chisel blows as they rode up this street—hardly unusual in the bustling new town—but now they grew too loud to ignore. “What’s this clamor?”

  “I don’t know, my lady.” They headed to the corner of the street to peer around toward the source of the noise. A crowd had gathered in the small square where the farmers set up stalls to sell their vegetables. Jeers and shouts rose from the throng. As they moved closer, Ela saw their attention focused on one woman who stood in their midst, her face wet with tears.

  Ela glanced back, glad to see her guard close behind her. She strode into the crowd. “What’s amiss?”

  The yelling and jeering subsided as people turned to stare at Ela. Most of them knew she was their countess. No one offered an explanation. “Why are you yelling at this woman?” Sullen faces greeted her. “Have you all been struck dumb?” She turned to the woman, who was about thirty, in a faded green dress and clean kerchief. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  “My daughter is missing,” the woman choked out, in a voice so small Ela could barely hear it.

  “A chit born in sin!” called out a woman behind Ela.

  “Silence!” Ela commanded in a voice as loud as she could muster. Then she turned back to the terrified woman. “What do you mean, she’s missing?”

  “She went outside to feed the chickens this morning, like she does every day—” The woman’s lip quivered. “But she never came back. I’ve searched for hours.”

  “The devil came and took his spawn back!” growled a man.

  Ela turned to glare. “Silence or you’ll spend time in the stocks!”

  “You’re not the sheriff,” mumbled someone. A murmur of assent rose.

  Ela’s back stiffened. True enough, she was not the sheriff, though not for lack of trying. The king had seen fit to slight her ambition thus far. But God had charged her with protecting and defending the people of Salisbury, and she served him before she served even the king. “I am the Countess of Salisbury,” she retorted. “And I command you to hold your fool tongues.” Again, she turned to the woman, who shook visibly. “How old is your daughter?”

  “Not yet nine, and small for her age.”

  Ela waited for some nasty remark from the crowd, but nothing rose beyond a general grumbling. “And why are these people attacking you instead of helping you search for her, like a good Christian should do?” She cast a cold glance over the assembled townspeople.

  The woman’s lip twitched again, and her gaze fell to the ground.

  “She’s a defrocked nun!” burst a shrill female voice. Ela sought out a fleshy face she recognized as a local alewife. “Living in sin with a fallen priest. They’re cursed in the eyes of God.”

  “Our Heavenly Father himself decides who holds favor in his eyes,” said Ela coldly. “Even if what you say is true, this woman’s child is innocent of her parents’ sin.” She moved toward the woman and placed a hand on her arm. “Where do you think your daughter has gone?”

  “I don’t know, my lady, but she wouldn’t leave the cottage yard by herself. She knows better than that. I’ve searched the woods and the river and all around and there’s no sign of her. Then someone said they’d seen her bundled into a cart.”

  “Who saw it?” Alys turned to the man who’d made the rude crack about the Devil coming for his spawn.

  “Whose cart was it?” Ela demanded of him.

  He shrugged. “Couldn’t say. Maybe it wasn’t her.” His derisive expression made Ela unsure he was even telling the truth. He might have made up the story to upset Alys. Still, if there was a chance the child had been stolen—

  She turned back to the distraught mother. “Where is your cottage?”

  “A half mile outside town along the Fugglestone road. She’s not there. I ran back to check before I came here.”

  “Too close to decent people!” rose a shrill female voice.

  “Silence!” Ela held her trembling arm. “Has the hue and cry been raised?”

  “That’s why I came into town, my lady, but the people here—” Her voice tailed off and fresh tears sprang to her red-rimmed eyes.

  “We must raise it immediately.” She turned to her attendant. “Mount her on your horse with you. We’ll ride to the castle.”

  Fortunately, her guard was an experienced man in middle age and knew better than to look shocked or put out. He dismounted and helped the poor, anxious woman up onto the horse. Her gown wouldn’t allow her to ride astride so he sat her sideways, sitting her almost on his lap in the saddle and holding her around her waist.

  Ela bid adieu to Sibel and mounted her own horse, then they rode toward the castle. “How long has your daughter been missing?”

  “Since before the bells rang for Tierce.” The woman looked miserable, perched perilously on the front of the saddle with the man’s big arm around her waist. “She likes to stay outside and play with the chickens after she feeds them. But when I called her in to help me with my baking she was gone. I searched the lanes and woods all around the cottage, in case she went out after a stray hen, but she was nowhere to be found.”

  “Sometimes my children play hide-and-seek. Could she be secreted away somewhere thinking it’s a game?” Ela s
teered Freya around a peddler’s cart as they left the town behind them.

  “Not Edyth. She’s not disobedient. And she knows to beware of strangers because they aren’t always kind to us. I called her name the whole way along the road into town.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He went to Bishopstone at first light to glean their fields. He doesn’t even know she’s missing. But it’s five miles away and I thought I’d find help quicker in the town—” She broke off into a sob.

  “Help is on its way, mistress.” At least she hoped it would be, if the new sheriff didn’t shirk his duties. “In the meantime can you think of other places we might look for her? Is there anyone—friend or enemy—who might have taken her into their home?”

  She shook her head, tears wet on her cheeks. “We have no friends here. We only live here because my mother gave us sanctuary in her cottage and left it to us when she died.”

  “You didn’t grow up here?”

  “No. We’re from Suffolk. My father came here six years ago to work on the cathedral. He was a stonemason, but he’s been dead nigh on four years. They both perished of a fever.”

  “My condolences.” She hesitated, not wanting to upset the woman further but feeling that she needed to know why she was so hated. “You were once a nun?”

  She cast her eyes to the ground. “Aye, at Bungay Priory. I felt a calling and my parents paid to send me there.” She glanced around, as if she were looking for someone about to hurl a stone at her. “John came to the manor as a novice to manage the oxen. Neither of us wanted to betray our calling but—” A violent shudder shook her from head to toe.

  “Never mind that now.” Clearly, what the townspeople had accused her of was true. It was hardly unheard of for men and women to leave the cloister, but it was certainly frowned upon. “We must focus on finding your daughter. What does she look like?”

  “She’s about yea tall.” She held her hand up level with her ribs. “She has blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She’s shy and always has been.”

  Their movement was so slow, the town barely behind them and the castle still far ahead through the fields. Ela looked at the guard. “Master Raymond, are you able to hold her tight enough for a trot?”

  “Aye, my lady,” he said, with only a slight quaver of doubt in his gruff voice.

  Ela squeezed Freya into a slow trot that covered the ground a little faster. She realized she hadn’t even asked the woman’s name. “What do you call yourself, mistress?”

  “Alys Wheaton, my lady.” Her voice emerged in bumpy hiccups as she jolted and jostled with the horse’s movement. “My husband is John Wheaton. He’s skilled in the management of cattle and oxen, but the townspeople won’t trust him with their beasts so he hires himself out as a laborer.”

  “Why don’t they trust him?” They rode over a fresh carpet of bright oak leaves. “Because he gave up his calling?”

  “Yes. But he’s industrious and supports us on the small plot of land my mother left us. We have a cow and chickens and grow much of our own food. I make some extra coin selling eggs and dried herbs in the town. The people aren’t always so cruel as today.”

  “Fear can bring out the worst in people.” Ela had noticed that some people became bold and brave under threat, while others became defensive and hostile.

  “Mistress Hargreaves said it was a punishment for my sins.” Her voice broke into a sob on the last word. “What if she’s right?”

  “Our Father wouldn’t punish a child for his parents’ sin.” At least she hoped he wouldn’t. A horrible thought occurred to her. What if no priest had agreed to baptize their daughter and she carried the burden of original sin and might die unsaved? “Has your daughter been christened?”

  “Oh, yes. Father Daniel of St. Peter’s baptized her. He moaned and grumbled about it, but he said it was his duty to save her soul.”

  Ela breathed out a sigh of relief, though she certainly hoped the poor child wasn’t about to meet her maker. If she’d been taken, there was no time to waste.

  The horses’ hooves clattered on the hard, dry road that rose toward the castle mound. Ela hoped the sheriff was at home and in a mood to help them. “Dry your tears so you can speak plainly to the sheriff.”

  She announced their purpose to the guards—her own guards just a few short, painful months ago—and they let them pass. Stable hands took their horses and Ela hurried Alys Wheaton into the hall past all the garrison soldiers thronging the courtyard and entrance to the castle.

  Albert, the old porter, smiled and greeted Ela until she told him their purpose. Then he shook his head with distress and hurried in to announce them.

  “Raise the hue and cry!” Albert called, with practiced drama. “Ela, Countess of Salisbury, requests an audience with the sheriff!”

  Ela spotted Simon de Hal, the new sheriff, seated in his chair on the dais. Surrounded by his foppish hangers-on, his fingers around an engraved goblet, he barely glanced up as she entered. She could almost hear his thoughts aloud—not you again.

  She approached briskly. “Good morrow, my lord sheriff.” She kept her chin high. “We are here to report a young girl missing. Her name is Edyth Wheaton and she is but eight years old. She vanished from her cottage yard and there’s been no sign of her since Tierce.”

  “The bells have not yet rung midday, my lady,” he said casually. He handed his goblet to a young man with ermine cuffs. “She is likely lost in a game.”

  “Or fallen down a well,” suggested a tall youth nearby.

  Alys Wheaton let out a whimper.

  “Or in the river,” offered De Hal. “Children do fall in rivers and drown.”

  Frustration surged inside Ela. “If she’s down a well or in a river, then all the more urgency to find her. But she’s not one to leave her home and we have reason to believe that someone might have snatched her and made off with her. Can you send out men to search the houses and stop people on the road?”

  De Hal stretched and leaned back in his chair as if the suggestion pained him. “You seriously expect me to knock on every door and search every cart traveling through Wiltshire?”

  “This is a child.” Ela struggled not to raise her voice and sound shrill. “Not a stray lamb.”

  De Hal glanced at Alys, in her faded gown and worn kerchief. He could see she wasn’t rich or influential. Then he looked back at Ela. “Diverting the king’s soldiers from their business and the jurors from their trades is a disruption we can ill afford. No doubt the child will come home in due course. She might be at a neighbor’s house.”

  Ela wanted to scream. “Do you not have children of your own, sir? If one of them were to vanish from the garden would you not want to raise the hue and cry and turn every stone in Wiltshire looking for them?”

  De Hal took his cup back and enjoyed a swig before responding. “My children are grown.”

  An idea seized her. “I’d be happy to command a group of men to search for the child. Then your attention wouldn’t have to be engaged when you have more pressing matters.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then had the cruelty to laugh. “No doubt you would. I hear you imagined yourself as high sheriff of Wiltshire!” He let out a guffaw and was joined in his merriment by the soulless ghouls clustered around him.

  Ela schooled herself to remain calm. “I come here to raise the hue and cry. Will you do nothing?”

  He looked bored. For a moment she felt like a mouse in his bedding that he’d like to smash beneath his fist. Then he sighed. “I shall send a posse of men to stop wagons on the London road. Will that satisfy you?”

  If she said no, he might do nothing. He’d say that he’d tried to help and been turned down. And his suggestion made her curious. “Why do you think she would be on the London road?”

  He hesitated for a moment, an odd expression in his eyes. “Stolen goods are often transported to London, the better to hide them in the melee.”

  “True,” said Ela, her mind raci
ng. Did del Hal know something? “Searching traffic to London would be a good start.” With soldiers out searching for Edyth, anyone local who held the girl would likely release her to avoid trouble.

  Poor Alys was trembling again, her eyes filled with tears. Ela wanted to put an arm around the desperate mother but knew that De Hal would view that as a sign of feminine weakness. “We shall go join the search.”

  She strode out of the hall. Her horse was being held outside, and she mounted and had her guard mount Alys again. She cursed herself for not bringing more than one attendant so she could send one home to raise her household into action.

  “We must go into the town here and spread the word that the sheriff’s men are searching.” Instead of riding back to New Salisbury, they rode into the village within the castle walls. Ela headed straight for Giles Haughton’s house. He was the coroner and an honest man who actually cared a whit for justice, unlike their new sheriff.

  As they rode through the town, Ela called out to each person they passed that a child was missing: a girl of eight named Edyth with blonde hair and blue eyes. People looked concerned, especially when they saw poor desperate Alys behind her, but Ela wasn’t sure they’d interrupt their daily routine even to save a life.

  When they reached Haughton’s house, Ela dismounted and knocked on the door. His housekeeper answered, sleeves rolled up and hands wet as if she were in the middle of scrubbing something. “Oh, my lady countess. Master Haughton is…abroad.”

  “Do you know where he is? It’s an urgent matter.”